Validity aside, it isn't an engineering discipline, that's right.
Programmers are important and do important work but programming doesn't make somebody a physician, or sheriff, or attorney, or congressman.
When control valves in a reactor don't appear to be having an effect you don't call the comp sci guy in to run diagnostics on the terminal, first, instead you call the engineers who manually seal the valves and shuts down the turbines to prevent coolant loss.
Well I am not planning to familiarize myself with every single engineering accrediting institution on earth nor would it have any impact on my beliefs of what is and is not an engineering discipline.
The notes in Cinnebar Mansion say there were tons of failed expiriments to create a clone of mew specifically in the first location you find Dittos
The only other location where you find Dittos is where you find MewTwo who is the same color as Ditto
Ditto and Mew both use Transform, have the same weight and similar stats, and both have blue shinies
I could be misremembering but I faintly recall the Pokémon movie showing actual ditto-like goo turning into clones in the Team Rocket cloning vats
The best argument against this is:
Shigeru from GameFreak said he only added transform as its ability because Mew was a last minute easter egg at the time and it stuck
Ditto do appear in other regions but it's debated if they're canon or if they're intended to be used for Pokémon breeding strats which are a popular game mechanic/feature
Fun Fact, Ditto were canonically failed pokemon clones developed by Team Rocket. There is a an argument to be made that it is all of the Pokémon it imitates trapped in constant flux with no real mind of its own.
IMO the smart move would be to embargo China entirely as a result of their frequent hostile actions and attacks directly on US Democracy.